Thursday, October 31, 2013

First off- does anyone know what happened to Mysti? It looks like she has made her blog private and I loved reading her blog on a daily basis. :( I hope everything is ok with her and her family and I hope she comes back soon! We miss you Mysti!

Anyway- I love when you log into your account and it shows that there is a $0 minimum payment owed on one of your loans that you pay monthly. Nice try but I'm not falling for that. I'll continue to make payments even when I'm "ahead" and get that loan down one month at a time. On a more positive note my original balance of $6500 on my smart option loan will finally be around $3930 after this payment of $110 which I have continued to pay monthly even as my minimum balance has gone lower and lower. I'm going to continue my snowball method of lowest to highest debt payoff. It really keeps me on track and I can see the visible progress. I'm one of those instant gratification kind of girls. :) In other news...no real plans for Halloween besides watching my DVRed episode of American Horror Story with the hubby and doing some laundry/straightening up the bedroom. Very exciting stuff! How about you? Any exciting plans for tonight?

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Screw
ups, Lessons learned, and Discover has decided to take their ball and go home….

I’ll
break this down by topic

STUDENT
LOANS: This will be a pretty long post since I barely posted this month. I
logged into my Sallie Mae account on Monday and absolutely panicked when I saw
Account 1 day Overdue for 164.40. Umm what!? I ALWAYS pay my student loans on
time. I look over to see if I have any pending payments still and it shows one
for 82.20-definitely not 164. Did I miss a payment somehow? I must have with
the new set up Sallie Mae has to pay loans. I quickly make the payment for 164
and some change. I don’t want any late charges on my account! I can’t believe I
screwed up. That is when it hits me….82.20 + 82.20= 164.40. They must have
added November’s bill to October’s bill which means…I just paid for 3 months of
payments. Damn. And guess what…that 82.20 in pending…that’s why my account is
showing overdue. I call Sallie Mae just to make sure and they do say that the
original amount plus the 164 is pending. I’m ok with the overpayment even
though I had made a large snowball to my Cornerstone loan that week. I also
asked about late charges and reporting to credit bureaus. It turns out that
there is a 15 day grace period with Sallie Mae. It isn’t until the 16th
of the month that they would charge a late fee. Also, they don’t report to
credit bureaus until after 31 days. Well I’m safe but my bank account is
definitely lighter. I’m still going to make payments for November and December
on that one loan because I don’t want to accumulate any interest. Like I
said…lesson learned. Now that I have mentioned it, my corner stone loan is down
to 906.00!!! I am so excited! I don’t think that I will be able to reach my
goal of getting 3 student loans paid off in 2013 but hey… having two loans paid
off is still a great feeling! I’ll just have to try harder in 2014 but hey the
year isn’t over yet either! I might be able to pull it off still.

REVISITING THE GOALS

Once again I haven’t made that
much progress when it comes to my goals. I might need to consider limiting my
goals or stop making such large (to me) goals. Ok…let’s see.

1. Go to Oral Surgeon Appointment and
schedule getting wisdom teeth pulled- I went to
the oral surgeon on Monday and I have an appointment set for November 26th.
This is going to cost my husband and I around $1500 not including prescriptions
and after care (milkshakes and smoothies ;) ). It’s a necessary evil though and
I scheduled it right around Thanksgiving to lessen the time I will have to take
off of work. I could wait until January and have the full amount of dental
benefits available again which is 1500 but I’m not going to be able to take off
work right after the new year.

2. Schedule appointment to go to
Social Security Office----umm still a no on that one. It’s not like I am
purposely putting it off- Fridays are the only day I get out early-and the
office closes at 3pm. I feel like every Friday I have some appointment or event
going on lately…sigh. So I will have to pick a day to leave work early. I need
to get this one done-I DO want my name changed before I go home for Christmas.

3. Schedule appointment for
optometrist.-again…nope. Right now I’m concentrated on my wisdom teeth- but I
do know of a vision place so I just need to see if they accept Tricare.

4. Brainstorm Christmas gifts.- I
actually came up with two ideas for my brother and dad…It is a start.

5. Get under 1,000 on my current student loan
that I'm snowballing payments on by end of month-I did this! Finally a goal that I accomplished
this month. I am currently at $906 on that loan.

6. Call Discover and negotiate APR or switch
to local bank- more on that down below…

7. Bake something! That Kitchenaid stand
mixer is begging to be used! Well I made
brownies out of box-how sad is that? I didn’t use the stand mixer yet. The
funny thing is that I packed some for my husband to take into the field
(Basically they go out into the woods and do various army exercises and
practice things) and he shared them with the guys in the office and they loved
them and said “Tell your wife to bake more.” I was like…they are out of a box
lol! I do love baking though so I think maybe I’ll finally start to do it some more.
I love baking…I just don’t like desserts….good for me though I guess.

Most importantly....get my spending under control. Set a budget for misc.
purchases. – I’m working on it. S and I have been talking about babies
recently (well not for several more months) but we need to get into a budget
especially if I am going to stop working once the baby is born.

Finally…Discover took their ball
and went home.

I finally decided to try to lower
my APR. My local bank is offering my 0% for 12
months and then 11.99% after that. Before I make that decision to get a
card and do a balance transfer I wanted to see if Discover would play ball.
They wouldn’t. I think I missed a call from my local bank to set up an
appointment so I need to call them back. I’ve been playing phone tag for quite
a while with them. I might be able to sit down with them this Friday. Fingers crossed. I’d like to make some
progress with 200 payments versus it being all eaten up in interested and being
right back to where I started . Ok well that’s it for now…I’ve been working on
this post little bits at a time during work for several days when I had a
moment or two to write but I’ve kind of lost my original motivation to make a
more detailed post..oh well. Maybe the next one.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Well...nine days later. Here are my October goals now that the month is almost a third of the way over.

1. Go to Oral Surgeon Appointment and schedule getting wisdom teeth pulled
2. Schedule appointment to go to Social Security Office
3. Schedule appointment for optometrist.
4. Brainstorm Christmas gifts.
5. Get under 1,000 on my current student loan that I'm snowballing payments on by end of month
6. Call Discover and negotiate APR or switch to local bank
7. Bake something! That Kitchenaid stand mixer is begging to be used!

Most importantly....get my spending under control. Set a budget for misc. purchases.

There hasn't really been that much exciting stuff going on lately. Work has been a little slow-normal during this time of year. My dad is coming down to visit my husband and I this week and he is bringing down my wedding dress that he got preserved and my miscellaneous wedding presents I didn't have room to bring back with me. He's also bringing the crockpot I got which is super exciting. Can't wait to finally try out some recipes!